The value of time is acutely clear in the ER. When a patient’s heart stops, survival odds fall by up to 10% every minute that passes without intervention. In stroke care, each minute of delay costs 1.9 million neurons. These numbers contribute to whether a patient will walk out of the hospital or become a statistic.
And while most hospitals are measuring clinical speed, not all are measuring communication speed. That blind spot can cost lives.
Time as Clinical Variable
While door-to-balloon times and surgical throughput are critical metrics for healthcare leaders, the clock really starts ticking the moment an alert is triggered. If the right clinician doesn’t see that alert instantly, downstream metrics stall.
When permanent brain damage begins after only 4 minutes without oxygen, communication becomes a clinical determinant with life-or-death stakes.
Communication speed doesn’t replace staffing or clinical judgment, but in STEMI, stroke, and trauma, it’s the difference between recovery and irreversible damage.
This is where most leadership conversations can fall short. We talk about staffing ratios, equipment readiness, and clinical protocols, but rarely about the infrastructure that moves information faster than manual coordination can. In an era of labor shortages and rising acuity, communication speed is a multiplier that makes every other investment count.
This truth comes into stark relief when you examine the flip side: according to U.S. research [PDF download], communication failures are implicated in over 70% of sentinel events. Beyond the clinical toll, these gaps contribute directly to billions in malpractice costs and fuel the burnout epidemic that is crippling the clinical workforce.
The Hidden (and Untracked) Delay
Most hospitals assume their escalation protocols work because they exist on paper. The reality is a fragmented relay race. Alerts bounce between pagers, overhead systems, and unsecured messaging apps. Routing is often broad (“notify everyone”) instead of precise (“notify the right person now”), resulting in alarm fatigue and heightened cognitive load for staff who are already battling burnout.
Manual escalation chains add friction. If the first responder doesn’t answer, someone has to notice and call the next person. In critical care, that’s a luxury you don’t have. A nurse shouldn't have to play detective to find which specialist is on call. The Joint Commission lists communication breakdown as a leading root cause of sentinel events. Yet few organizations measure alert-to-action time as a KPI.
The fact is, you can have the best-trained staff and the most advanced equipment, and still fail because the right person didn’t know soon enough. But preventable delays can be eliminated, with the right systems.
Seconds as a System Metric
Healthcare systems benchmark door-to-balloon time for STEMI because it predicts outcomes. Why not benchmark alert-to-action time? It’s just as consequential.
When communication lags, the effects ripple far and wide:
- ICU stays lengthen, straining capacity.
- Staff morale erodes under preventable chaos.
- Liability risk climbs (because delays are traceable).
Treating communication readiness as a measurable capability changes the focus of conversation from “IT upgrade” to “patient safety infrastructure.”
Imagine reporting to your board not just on clinical KPIs, but on communication KPIs: median alert-to-response time, escalation success rate, and percentage of alerts reaching the right clinician on the first attempt. If your median alert-to-response time is 90 seconds, what does that mean for a STEMI patient? These numbers are really telling a story about institutional capability.
What High-performance Communication Looks Like
Effective communication modernization prioritizes workflow intelligence over channel proliferation. Three principles define effective critical response communication:
- Role-based routing: Alerts go directly to the clinician responsible, not a distribution list.
- Automated escalation: If the first responder doesn’t acknowledge, the system escalates instantly (i.e., no manual chasing).
- Multi-modal delivery: Voice, secure text, and app notifications ensure redundancy.
That said, connectivity is the nervous system underpinning these principles. Critical response systems should sync with EHR, nurse call, and mobile devices to avoid siloed alerts. Regulatory compliance matters too—whether HIPAA, GDPR, or local standards, auditable trails protect both patients and providers.
Medical facilities that implement unified workflows report measurable gains. Amstelveen, (Netherlands)-based Amstelland Hospital reduced internal call time by 20% and improved emergency response after replacing fragmented systems with integrated communications that allow staff to be reached anywhere in the facility. For CPR teams and medical specialists, eliminating the search for a fixed phone when an alert comes through can mean the difference between life and death.
In the end, communication systems are about certainty rather than speed. “Probably delivered” is not good enough in a high-stakes environment. You need confirmation, escalation, and auditability built into the process.
The Implementation Reality
While the case for modernizing critical communication infrastructure is compelling, the path from decision to deployment is rarely straightforward. Budget constraints create genuine dilemmas: a comprehensive communication overhaul can require significant capital investment at a time when many health systems are operating on thin margins, competing with needs for clinical equipment, facility upgrades, and staffing.
This is where expertise matters. Hospitals that succeed don’t just buy devices and platforms. They redesign workflows, integrate platforms, and manage adoption across diverse teams. That requires a technology partner who understands both the clinical urgency and the organizational realities.
Mitel’s recommendation is to leverage advisory services to help leadership teams navigate this complexity with clarity. From auditing current alert-to-action times to mapping integration paths and building phased adoption plans, you should focus on measurable outcomes. This approach ensures communication upgrades strengthen patient safety without disrupting care delivery.
Why the Gap Persists
If better communication systems demonstrably save lives, why haven't all hospitals already implemented them? The answer lies partly in how healthcare budgets are structured. Communication infrastructure typically falls under IT or operations budgets, not clinical budgets, making it harder to justify investments whose ROI is measured in prevented adverse events rather than revenue generation.
Many hospitals have incrementally patched their systems over decades—adding a nurse call system here, a secure messaging app there. This has resulted in functional but fragmented ecosystems that "work well enough" to avoid being prioritized over more visible crises.
There's also an attribution problem: when outcomes are poor, it's easier to identify gaps in clinical protocols or staffing than to trace the problem back to a 90-second communication delay.
Finally, vendors themselves have contributed to decision paralysis by offering overlapping solutions with varying integration capabilities, leaving hospital leaders uncertain about which platform will still be supported in five years.
Solving this requires treating communication as clinical infrastructure worthy of the same governance, measurement, and accountability applied to surgical suites or imaging equipment. Here too, advisory services from a technology partner can provide immense value.
The Leadership Imperative
Communication infrastructure considerations extend far beyond a pure IT remit. These are governance decisions with clinical, financial, and reputational stakes. And when leaders are setting the standard for what “fast enough” means, they are essentially deciding whether communication is treated as overhead or clinical infrastructure.
Three actions separate proactive systems from reactive ones:
- Audit current workflows: How long from alert to bedside? If you don’t know, that’s the first problem.
- Fund integration, not just devices: A new phone doesn’t fix a broken process.
- Monitor communication KPIs: If you track door-to-balloon, track alert-to-action.
The question isn’t whether the right communication technology exists for your environment and your requirements—it does. The question is whether leadership treats seconds as a strategic variable. Because in healthcare, seconds signify more than time; they signify outcomes, liability, and reputation. If communication is treated as overhead, every investment in staffing and equipment is undermined.
By way of a closing reflection: Seconds define outcomes. And leaders define whether those seconds are wasted or saved. If your next critical alert went out right now, would it reach the right clinician in time?
Explore Mitel’s healthcare communication solutions:
Application | Description | Mitel solution |
Automated critical alerting and prioritization | Detect, prioritize, and communicate alarms instantly to the right staff, reducing response times and preventing escalation | |
Mass notification for rapid staff mobilization | Broadcast urgent messages across multiple channels to reach dispersed teams quickly during emergencies | |
Integrated incident management and risk intelligence | Coordinate response efforts with real-time location tracking, risk assessment, and unified communication tools | |
Secure mobile communication for on-the-move staff | Enable instant, encrypted voice and messaging for clinicians across the care facility, ensuring no delay in critical updates | |
Advisory and managed services for operational resilience | Expert guidance and ongoing support to optimize workflows and maintain readiness for high-stakes scenarios |
